It is funny how different the memories can be! You talk about get togethers and holidays and barndances. I think a lot of it can be down to the experience your parents made it for you - I think yours allowed you a better one than mine. My parents were just intensely strict with me, though not with my sisters who were younger. But if we went to a wedding and there was a dance then I remember being told from stupidly early like 7 or 8 that it was inappropriate for me to dance with males...WTF! By the time I got to 13 or 14 and we did go to the odd garden party I was so fed up and angry with being constantly watched and constantly told not to talk to this brother or that brother too long that I just gave up and would take a book sit in a corner of the garden as far from everyone as I could be and refuse to eat, drink or speak to anyone until it was time to leave. And guess what my parents didnt like that either. Looking back they should have realised there was something wrong with their upbringing and that my inbred faults were just exacerbated by these. I can remember going to other congregations on holiday at 15 or 16 and young brothers and sisters coming up to talk to me and my mother standing in between until conversation became impossible. She did this at my own congregation if I tried to talk to anyone male. Childhood was just one long battle to keep me away from men. So so silly of them. Let kids make their own decisions.
Even when I left home at 16, sexually I behaved myself (apart from one instance where I lost my virginity for the benefit of the elders on my judicial) until I was ready to get naughty when I was 18. I dont think my mother believed this. When I moved back in briefly prior to my first reinstatement at 17 and we were friends for the first time in our lives I told her about life alone. I told her that I regularly had men in my attic room and spent whole nights alone with them, but that nothing happened. I made them sleep in the bed the other side of my room. She was quite shocked - she had such a low opinion of me she thought I must have just gone wild sexually for that year and nothing could be further from he truth. I was just very innocent and naive and I expected the boys and men I brought home with me for tea to have tea and to behave themselves. And you know what - they did. Not that they didnt ask or curse me for blue balls, but I wasn't disrespected once. It was as if people just responded to my innocence and trust by becoming so themselves. My mother of course found this very hard to believe given she'd spent the last 17 years guarding my virtue - in the kingdomhall - as if I was going to skewer someone on the backrow after the final prayer or something ridiculous! And of course believed that all men are prowling around like roaring lions. So you fathers out there, who fear the vileness of the youths hanging around your daughters should give them some credit and remember a lot of it is how your daughter behaves and the message she gives across. Of course you always have to look out for the rogue man. But on the whole I think men are wonderful respectful creatures if allowed to be.
One word describes the growing up as a witness - Suffocating.